


Every Time

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Implied Torture, because this is their life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 17:53:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retrospective on their friendship. Rhodey POV, set between IM2 and Avengers (so could be seen as a companion piece to Treasure). MCU, though Rhodey's history is blank there so I had to pluck a tiny bit from elsewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jim Rhodes thought that the Argentine cloud forests didn't look real. Sheer rock walls lifted up into the sky and plunged into fog-wreathed greenery. Water trickled down the plateau sides and vanished into crevices hundreds of feet below, adding to the drifting mists. It played hell with the War Machine's sensors; he and Tony could barely keep track of each other, let alone get a fix on any other signal. Somewhere in this eerie landscape was a weapons cache that needed to be taken off the market, one of Stane's old customers come out of hiding.

At least, that was the word. He was starting to doubt it, but they kept at their search. Another two hours passed.

“Hey. You awake?” Jim said.

“Nope.” Tony had been quiet for most of the mission. Jim had assumed he was mentally elsewhere, but perhaps that was unfair.

“Think I got something here.” Jim studied the readouts and gained altitude, looking for a better vantage. Sheer rock reached skyward to his left, while the forest went on below without visible interruption. “Can't get a fix.”

“Lemme take a look. Don't go away.” A faint hiss of static underlay his voice.

“Roger.” Jim watched the fog below for any signs of movement, for an outline that might indicate human presence. He couldn't get a visual on Tony at all, just intermittent flickers of his presence on the HUD.

“That's weird.”

“That never means anything good. Are they up on the next terrace?” He glanced skyward.

“No, it's—”

He never heard the rest of Tony's comment. A flare of light blinded Rhodes for a moment before the compensators cut in, and then everything went dark. Communication was out. Everything was out.

He was a long way from the ground.

*

_So how did you two get to be friends_ was probably the most-asked question in Jim's life. Usually he could get away without commenting, because _I don't know, it just kind of happened_ wasn't the answer people were looking for, but it was how these things went. Nobody asked him probing questions about his other friends, the guys he hung around with on base, the women he went out with, but they'd been asking him about Tony for almost twenty years.

He remembered the day they met, because he'd heard the Stark kid's reputation and was skeptical about it. MIT was overstocked with child prodigies, and it was easy to get jaded about them. It didn't help that Tony at sixteen had been spectacularly unprepossessing—it was the eighties, they all had bad hair-cuts, but he had been skinny and badly socialized, already used to fending off people who wanted things from him.

_Huh_ , Jim thought as he got one of those wary, measuring glances, and gave it right back. The next thing he saw was a grin, like he'd passed a test without moving, without even blinking.

Two weeks later, there was black smoke everywhere before a fire extinguisher went off, adding white smoke and foam to the mix.

“See, I told you he wasn't useless,” Tony said when he stopped laughing. “Good boy, Dummy—no, that's enough, put it down.”

“Hey, the damn propellant mix _worked_.” Jim suspected that he looked like the next-to-last scene of _Ghostbusters_ , and the only reasonable thing to do was to share the experience by flinging a handful of goop at Tony, who laughed ever harder while the fire alarms whooped.

Poking Tony so he would pretend to be paying attention when the professor asked if Mr. Stark was on this planet today turned into hanging out; when you've been working hard and are loopy with success and sleep deprivation, no one wants to stop. Hanging out with Tony was educational even then. Kids started coming up to _Jim_ with, “Hey, if you wouldn't mind asking....”

Fuck yes, he minded.

A dreary Cambridge winter turned into a dubious Cambridge spring. Jim's first experience of dusting Tony off after a major party (file under _holy shit_ ) was followed by his first experience of dusting Tony off after a car wreck. Spring turned into a leaden Philadelphia summer and back into autumn.

“You are _two hours_ late,” Jim said. Two hours he had spent kicking his heels in the word's tiniest, most boring airport, because he hadn't been able to get a direct flight in to Boston.

“I forgot. How was your summer?”

“If you ever picked up your phone, you would know. Do not pull that absent-minded genius bullshit.”

“I was, ah, busy?” Tony tried a suggestive grin, but that old wary uncertainty lurked behind it.

“You wish. Here, you can make up for it.” He tossed his bag in the convertible's back seat. “I figure you owe me two hours, shove over.”

“Fine, fine, I get it.” He shook his head and slid over to the passenger seat, but the wary look went away. “You only love me for my car keys.”

_You wish._

_*_

At least he wasn't dead. No one could say that Jim Rhodes wasn't an optimist. He opened his eyes.

This... was not promising. He was out of the armor, for one thing, and it was dark. He had some aches and bruises, but nothing bad enough to suggest that he'd hit the ground as hard as he should have. He heard nothing but his own breathing and a faint sound of dripping water.

The ground was packed dirt, chill and damp. The walls felt like cinderblock. The room was maybe twenty by thirty. Ruts in the ground suggested heavy things had been stored there, but his slow search found nothing useful. There was a single door of corrugated metal. It was fastened securely on the other side. No light leaked around it. He had been out for a while.

If Tony had gotten away, then there should have been some cavalry happening by now. If he hadn't, odds of anyone else finding this place were not good.

The door rattled. He heard a muttered exchange, and blinding light came through the opening. By the time his vision cleared, the door was closed again, but there was some light now. Jim's bottomed-out assessment of the situation lifted half a notch: _neither one_ of them was dead yet.

“This is the absolute last time I listen to you about anything,” he muttered, and dropped down to see how bad it was. Tony's eyelids flickered at the sound of his voice, but that was the extent of his response. He was drenched, shivering and clammy-skinned, and his pulse raced under Jim's careful touch. Shock. No bones broken, and at least they hadn't messed around with the arc reactor—or if they had, they'd put it back when they were done.

He wished he hadn't had that thought.

What a shitty place for a heroic last stand.

*

“What you doing after you get out of here?” Jim asked. He had been resigned by then to the fact that even pulling a double major, Tony would be done in the spring, leaving the rest of them in his dust. The main reason he wasn't getting _three_ degrees was named Susan. An IQ that high ought to be illegal.

“Start my own company.” He grinned a little fiercer than usual.

“Seriously? Heading over to the b-school?” All of that restless impatience harnessed, the ideas that spilled out like breath put to use—that might be something worth seeing.

“That stuff's the easy part. Why, you want a job?”

Jim laughed outright. “Got my own plans.”

“Oh?”

“Air Force.” NASA, someday, maybe.

“Seriously?”

“There an echo in here?” He met Tony's baffled stare.

“ _Why?”_

Why would he want anything else? Not even the sky for a limit.

If you had asked Jim to describe himself, and if he knew you well, he might have said that he was a fighter. It was kind of a requirement for where he'd grown up, for being a smart kid who knew what he wanted in a place like that. He couldn't even say that he never went looking, never put a stop to something before it could start, never let his temper rule the day. It was a little easier once he left Philly, but not as much easier as he'd expected. Fewer fists involved, but still fighting.

_Only thing that matters in this world, you can hold your head up when you look in the mirror,_ his mother always said _. No one can make you ashamed but yourself. Nobody can beat you but_ you _, if you give up._

Obvious stuff aside, it was one of the differences between himself and Tony.

“Why you let them get away with that?” he had asked once, tense and bewildered and itchy-fisted.

Tony had looked blank, as if the words were already out of his mind, then shrugged. “Why should I give a shit what they think? Waste of energy.”

Jim chalked it up to money. Tony had been born _knowing_ that people could be bought off or blown off, that they didn't matter. Sometimes, though, he thought that maybe it was something else, that Tony was saving up for one particular fight, and he never got to have it.

Phones ringing at odd hours were a regular part of their lives. Jim fumbled the receiver twice.

“Hello?”

“It's me.”

“Hey.” Jim squinted at the clock. Two forty-five. He'd been busy with senior year, and Tony'd been busy taking up his rightful place in the jet set, and they hadn't talked in a month. “What's up?” He went through the list. Needs bail, needs picked up, needs somewhere to hang out until he sobers up....

“I just, um, got a call from Obie. There's been an accident.” He sounded weird.

Jim sat up so fast he almost dropped the phone. “What? What happened?”

“My folks. The car. He said it was... almost instantaneous.”

_Fuck._ “I... Jesus, Tony.” He swallowed hard. “Where are you?”

“London. For the next, uh, hour and a half.”

“Can I... is there anything you want me to do? I can catch a bus down tomorrow.” He still had one final left—hell, it was _a week before Christmas_ —but he'd figure something out.

“No.”

Silence settled and stretched, like it would if they were in the same room. He tried to stop thinking about how much this call was costing. He remembered when his dad died. He'd just been a kid, but he didn't forget that heart-punched, weightless _why hasn't the world stopped_ feeling.

Eventually Tony said, “Hey, so, anyway, thought you should know. Thanks. I'll give you a call.” Click.

Tony didn't talk about his parents much, and didn't go home very often. He'd gone to Philly with Jim for a long weekend once; it had been awkward and painfully illuminating to see the things that brought out that shuttered smile. He didn't have much to say about the people he'd been hanging out with lately, either, other than that most of them weren't very bright.

“Shit,” Jim said out loud, and got up to find out the bus schedule to New York. He got a paper at the bus station and read about the crash, about the legend and legacy of Howard Stark, all of which he already knew.

When he got to the house he just looked at it for a few moments, like he was going to get into a staring contest with _it._ There was a crowd of people taking pictures from the street, a few cops to make sure they behaved, and some private security on top of that. The latter took his name with long-suffering skepticism; this wasn't a place people approached on foot if they had any actual business there. They looked startled when word came back to let him through.

In the foyer, a tall, balding man in a rumpled suit and a scowl stalked around with a cordless phone pressed to his ear, rang off with an irritated gesture and looked at Jim.

“Young Mr. Rhodes. We met once. Were we expecting you?”

“No, sir. Tony called me this morning. I'm... very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. He did?” Stane sounded surprised.

“I came down to see if there's anything I can do to help.”

“Hm.” It was like looking looking inside a calculator. Circuits hummed and threw up a result: _acceptable_. “Good. I—” The phone in his hand rang. “Down the hall on the left. Excuse me.”

Jim nodded and walked off that way until he found a sitting room full of pale furniture that looked as if it had never been sat on. No one was sitting on it now; he spotted Tony between the windows and the piano, along with three middle-aged women who had _distant relative_ picked out in pearls all over them. All three of them grew a faintly astonished expression, and Tony turned around.

For just a second, Jim wondered if this had been a mistake; Tony looked blank for a couple of seconds. He wore jeans and a button-down shirt and looked like he hadn't slept. He said something Jim didn't hear to the others and crossed the room.

“Hi. What are you doing here?”

“Thought I might be useful. From what I could see outside already, there's going to be a zoo.”

“Tell me about it. Thank God Obie's dealing with the press.” Tony blinked twice. “Okay, then. Sure. Um, let me show you around,” he said, and there was a fugitive glitter of desperation in his eyes that made Jim nod and allow himself to be guided at length around what he found a kind of sickeningly huge house. Tony's house now, presumably.

Jim gave up counting the square feet, and managed to keep his comments to, “Quite a place.”

“Yeah. I was thinking about setting it on fire.”

For which he read _thank you._ “Good thing I showed up, then.” On impulse, Jim gave him a hug, because... damn. Tony wasn't good at hugs, but he submitted to this one with an almost-suppressed shiver. Most of the time, it was easy to forget how young he was. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah.” It was a little breathless and not at all convincing, and they stood there in the hall for a few minutes until he said, “Yeah,” more surely. “Just... y'know. Unexpected.”

“I know. Just let me know what needs done, okay?”

“Okay.”

That was a long three days. Jim did his best to be useful, because that was what you did when people died. Tony didn't seem to want to talk about anything, but when it was finally over got absolutely shit-faced and said, _I hadn't talked to them in months._ It wasn't an admission, just a statement that neither of them knew what to do with once it was said.

Jim went home and hugged his mom more than usual, even for Christmas. He didn't see Tony again for years, so for a long time his mental image was hungover and lost-looking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning out to be a bit longer (and a lot slower, sorry) than expected. I hope it doesn't suck.

Jim was running out of innocuous things to talk about. He could tell when Tony came out of it, because he went from boneless to tense as strung wire. He kept on talking.

“...You spent the entire first class correcting the mistakes in the guy's book. Damn, which one was that? Lost his name.” His main worry was that Tony was going to wake up straight into a flashback, and hoped that the sound of his voice would help. “He was pissed.”

“Should've hired a proofreader.” He sounded a little slurred, but lucid.

Jim relaxed a trifle. “How you doing?”

“Been worse. You?”

“Better now.”

“Aw, sweet. Not that I don't love you, but not this much?”

“You were in shock, and it's cold.” Jim had stripped off Tony's soaked shirt and wrapped both of them in his own, to the extent that he could. He shifted away. “What did I miss before?”

“Not much. That little device they have is way too effective. Let's go take it away from them.”

“Who the hell _are_ they?”

“I don't know. I don't care. Yellow uniforms, not terribly attractive. There was some arguing over whether to shoot us or sell us to the highest bidder. There's a camera outside the door. Maybe a guard.”

“Can you move?”

“Sure.” Tony closed his eyes and levered himself into a sitting position with a grimace that said he might be keeping it together for the moment, but it wasn't guaranteed to last. “Hang on.” He dug around in his pants for a moment—Jim raised his eyebrows but kept his mouth shut—and produced a small multi-tool.

“How the hell...?” He couldn't imagine their captors were amateur enough to have missed something like that when they searched them. Certainly Rhodes hadn't had anything useful on him when he woke up.

“Guy dropped it. Nobody likes being puked on. This must be his first time.”

Right. At least he couldn't see any blood on it. “Next question, where do we go.” He got up and shook some feeling back into his limbs as he studied the door, then the roof.

“I was trying to tell you when things blew up—they've got helicopters in a cavern in the side of the plateau. Looks like most of this place is underground. Why we couldn't find them before. So we head right, and down. And try not to fall off the edge. Or get shot.”

Jim considered it for a moment. “I like it. Let's do that.” They hashed out the details, knowing full well that it wasn't going to happen like this, but it was... necessary.

“Just curious, what was your plan before this one?” Tony asked.

“ _My_ plan? What makes you think I had a plan?” Jim asked.

“Years of painful experience.”

“You mean me talking us out of trouble that was your idea.”

“Just 'cause you've got that 'who me?' look down so well doesn't mean at least half of it wasn't your idea.”

“No one can prove a thing. Ready?”

*

“ _Rhodey?_ Holy shit, I did not recognize you! Come here, I need you.”

“Uh—Tony? Hi. What are you doing here?” The hotel conference room was full of uniforms and suits, all the big companies had sent someone, but it was a small event when all was said. Everyone around them was staring at Tony.

“Testing my patience, apparently. C'mon, bring your drink, you'll need it.”

There had been random phone conversations since the funeral, sometimes across a space of months, sometimes in a flurry. Jim had been busy with training and then deployments, and they hadn't been in the same country at the same time in a while. He thought that Tony was looking well, not so skinny as he had been. Someone had finally taught him how to dress, or else he'd started paying attention. The facial hair was a bit of a shock in person, but without it Tony would probably still look fifteen.

“Reinforcements, Mr. Stark?” Colonel Perez raised his grizzled eyebrows. “At ease, Lieutenant.”

“Colonel.”

“Rhodey, help. Someone in this conversation is being stupid, and I'm pretty sure it's not me.”

Rhodes kept his placid tone. “Personally, I wouldn't discount the possibility.”

Perez looked like he'd been putting up with this for a wile. “Oh, I understand what you said, I just don't _believe_ you can get a payload that size into something that small at any useful range.”

“Reduce the casing weight eighteen percent,” Tony said. “And that's the first generation, I think we can get another three percent off it. Does anyone have any paper? Mona?”

A harassed-looking blonde woman Jim hadn't noticed following them—she had been disguised as a mobile filing system—handed him a pad, accepted his glass in exchange and said, “It's Mina.”

“Right, right.”

Perez crossed his arms. “It'll break up on launch.”

“No, it won't. Look.” Tony found a pencil and started sketching.

Interested despite himself, Jim had to ask, “ _What_ are you doing to that thing? Or planning on doing.”

“Redesigning the fins. See....”

Just like that. When Tony was on, he was _on_ , and Jim had almost forgotten how much fun it could be. Fifteen minutes later they were arguing about which catalyst would be best for the plating process when the colonel laid a hand on Jim's shoulder, startling him.

“I take it you have an opinion on this?” Perez said.

“Sir, whatever anyone says about him—”

Tony elbowed him hard without looking up. “ _Really,_ thanks, you're a hell of a lot of help.”

“—I've never seen Tony do sloppy work. If he says this works, I'll bet my paycheck on it.”

“Please, I'm betting _mine_ here.”

“Hm.” Perez didn't look convinced. He glanced at Jim. “Get me a report before lunch tomorrow.”

“Sir.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “I could give you a working prototype by dinner. ”

“We'll see, Mr. Stark. We'll see.” He walked away.

“How do you _work_ with these people?”

“They're good people. Who can still hear you, Tony.”

“I know.” He reclaimed his drink from Mina. “Looking good, uniform suits you. Oh, Mona? Call Obie. Done deal, he owes me.” He looked around the room. “You guys need to hire more women.”

“We'll work on that. Seriously, what are you doing here? Would have thought this town was way too dull for you.”

“It is, but I was in the neighborhood. Let's go somewhere else and catch up.”

Beer had to be swapped out for coffee before that was done. Tony talked about California; Jim didn't talk about Iraq. Years spooled by. They jumped out of some airplanes. The position in the weapons development program came up. Jim never did figure out whether Tony had put in a word in with someone; he did things like that, sometimes. They built things. Tony offered him a job; Jim said no. Jim got promoted. Tony got arrested. There was no moment where things went definitively off track.

There was the _Is this really all you want out of life_ talk (“Is this a trick question? You did _see_ her, right?”), the _How long do you think your liver is going to last like this_ talk (and “You sound like my mother” was not something Tony would ever say sober), and the _I do not want to go to your funeral_ talk (“So don't come, my god, why are you so morbid, is there something you're not telling me?”).

Sometimes Jim thought that Tony was daring him to give up, that this had somehow turned into a competition. _You don't lose unless you quit._ He didn't quit. He didn't hope, exactly, but he wasn't going to give up, not then, not ever.

It was the most beautiful column of fire he had ever seen on a satellite pickup, and sand burning his knees (he knew he wasn't dreaming), and Tony's weight against his shoulder, shaking a little from relief or exhaustion. He felt a hard edge of what must be metal against his shoulder where it had no business being, and pulled back in alarm.

“What—”

“It's okay. S'harmless.” Tony's laugh was a little cracked. “Actually no, it's not harmless at all, but it's not going to explode, or anything. It's okay. Tell you about it later.”

He did. Jim could tell that he was leaving a lot out, and didn't push it right away; he had a call to make to Pepper. Jim liked Pepper; she was smart and sane, the most balanced person he knew. He sometimes thought that if she ever quit working for Tony, he might do more than like her.

She hadn't cried when he gave her the news about the attack. She did this time. “How....” She cleared her throat. “How is he?”

“A little banged up.” He decided to save the complicated part for later. “Otherwise, kind of hard to tell yet. He's not talking much, we don't really know what might have happened.”

“I see.” She probably did; no doubt her nightmares had been less detailed than Jim's, but much the same in substance. “All right. I'll get things sorted out at the house, and everything.”

“Thanks. And listen, I hate to ask you for anything right now, but I'm going to need some help handling this. There are people coming out of the woodwork already who want to grill him about what happened. The press doesn't know yet, but it's gotta leak soon. Can I send these guys to you?” He was already getting tired of reminding people that Mr. Stark was a _civilian._

“Absorb and deflect.” Pepper sounded as if she was smiling. “I suppose you'll need to see the press release first?”

“Afraid so.”

“I'll get right on that, then. I—thank you. Thank you.”

A lot of things needed doing. For a lot of reasons that weren't any less good just because they annoyed him, Jim had to be the one to do them, and it was two long days before he got back. He got to the room just as one of the surgeons came out. The man wore a disgruntled expression and waved him on in.

Tony stood at the window, shirtless, looking at something that was probably a lot farther away than the hospital parking lot. Even in the city, they were short on luxury accommodations. He glanced at the door with a frown. That vanished when he saw Jim, but what replaced it was an oddly searching, uncertain expression.

“Looks like I get a permanent souvenir of this trip.” He tapped the reactor. “Too fucked up in there to take it out. Don't tell, everyone'll want one. Where the hell have you been? You look...” He gestured. “Dusty.”

“Sorry.” Jim looked him over, noted the scars and sleepless eyes, and decided that of all possible moods, mulish was better than a lot of the alternatives. “They've finished digging out the site of the event.”

“You make it sound like a meteor strike.”

“Kinda looks like one.” They had found a lot of bodies. This was not a topic he had ever wanted or expected to discuss with Tony. For all the things they had done and said over the years, there had been that one difference in their experience, present and never named. “Can we talk about this now? About what happened.” This time tomorrow, a literal billion people were going to want to know.

“Nope.”

“Tony. That is not the way to do this. You can trust me on this one.”

“I realize you are expected to write something down some—”

“You think I've been out here this whole time so I could write a report?”

It wasn't one of Tony's usual smiles, but a rueful ghost of an expression. “No. But you gotta trust me too, okay? Yeah, I know,” he added while Jim tried to figure out what the hell he could say in response to that. “I just gotta... figure a few things out, here.”

“All right.” He hesitated.

“How about some numbers? You guys love that stuff.”

“If that's where you want to start, okay.” He wrote down the list—a scrupulous inventory of the Ten Rings' camp, and no wonder they'd seen the explosion from space. Mostly, he was trying to figure out to what extent Tony was faking his casual tone. There was something weird going on in there. That was only to be expected, he just couldn't figure out what it was. Determination? Jim steered carefully toward the subject of how many people had been at the camp. They hadn't found any evidence of survivors.

“Around fifteen of them at any given time, and the two of us.”

Jim blinked. “Two of you?”

Eventually Tony said, “You would have liked him.” The note of finality in his voice brooked no further discussion of the topic.

“Whatever you did—”

“Wasn't enough.” Tony looked at the window. “Now do me a favor, tell me whose life I have to make hell to get out of here?”

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Jim's life might have flashed before his eyes, or maybe it was the gun going off. He kept blinking, but his vision wouldn't clear. His ears rang. The rock wall behind him was hard and cold. He leaned against it, not sure what would happen if he tried to move now.

Tony said, “I think we've got a minute or two now. Hold still.”

Jim felt him touch his head. It stung. He heard a slow release of breath. “How...?”

“Just a cut. Good three inches, not pleasant, but what passes for your brains are still in there. I thought—right. Don't do that again.”

“Do my best.” He wiped blood out of his eyes and crossed _almost get shot in the head at close range_ off his life's “to do” list.

He blinked a few more times and the vague shape that _wasn't_ Tony resolved into a dead man slumped against the opposite wall. He wasn't sure which of them had done that. Jim did have a gun in his hand, but he didn't see any blood on the body.

Down sides to their otherwise brilliant escape plan: It was dark out. Tony came with a built-in lighted target, and wasn't moving all that fast, owing to the unhappy encounter between his knee and someone's boot earlier in the day. Up sides: people tended to focus on him for a couple of seconds. The single guard on their prison hadn't been much trouble, and now they had a gun, which was good when three more of the yellow-suited people showed up a minute later. So far, Jim was ahead of the Yellow Suits on aim and reaction time. Barely.

They had found this entrance to the tunnel complex. The narrow passage turned sharply only a few feet away. Dim light leaked around the corner.

Jim asked, “Get anything useful off that guy?” He pushed himself off the wall as the shock of the near miss wore off.

“A flashlight and some spare change. I think we're going to have company soon.” Tony scrubbed his hands against his pants as if to get the blood off. “You should hang the uniform thing up. Come work for me, it'll be fun.”

“Doing what?” He checked that the gun was in working order. “You quit doing the one thing that might be called my area of expertise.”

“You didn't sleep through all your classes, we could find you something.”

“I like what I do. Most days.” He gave Tony a careful look and got a brittle smile back. Not good. “If we're going to do this, we'd better keep going. Discuss my resume later.”

“Yeah, good point. Let's go.”

“Right.” The only way out of this was forward. He got himself sorted out and took the lead around the corner.

*

The hospital staff lasted two days.

“Your friend is ridiculously healthy, all things considered.” She snapped the folder closed and stared at Rhodes. “Get him out of here before I change that.”

“We talking physically, or mentally?”

“He doesn't appear to be in imminent danger of a breakdown.” Doctor Leng shrugged. “No reason to think he's a danger to anyone, or at least not any more so than usual.” She handed him a stapled packet. “You probably know all of this already, but here's some things to watch out for. I suggest taking things slowly. Keep to a predictable routine as much as possible.”

The plane ride home was quiet enough to make Jim nervous. Tony didn't talk nearly as much as people thought that he did, but prolonged introspection was new. A few times, he thought Tony might have been about to say something, but changed his mind.

Even if Tony had told him what he planned, Jim had no idea what he would have done about it. His first thought at the press conference was, _Christ, what did they_ do _to him?_ After twenty years, this kind of about face left no room for any thought but one, that this was trauma talking.

“Things are a bit, ah, delicate at the moment,” was Obie's careful response when Jim got through to him the next day. “Obviously I can't breach any confidences, but...” He sounded regretful and as close to anxious as Jim had ever heard him. At least Tony was talking to someone. “We're just taking things slowly. I think that really, a bit of time to process is what's called for, and we'll just have to... hope.”

Jim could do that. He still had to deal all day with people who slammed his door open and demanded to know why he couldn't talk Tony around. _You've known him a long time, he has to listen to_ you _, doesn't he?_ Jim kept a straight face, told all of them that he would see what he could do, and then made sure it fell to the bottom of his to-do list.

When he did finally call, Pepper said, “I have no idea what's going on. I wish I did. He has some kind of project going.”

“Still?” Jim's heart sank at this evidence that nothing had changed. “Any idea what it's about?”

“I don't know. He's not talking about it, except he says it's not a weapon. I think it's got something to do with that... thing. In him.” She gave a tired little sigh. “I've spoken to a dozen psychiatrists, they all said don't push, this stuff sometimes takes a long time to work through. But he seems to be happy.”

If it was helping Tony cope, then maybe it was okay. At the same time, if this was going to be the way of things going forward—this was Jim's entire life. He wasn't in a hurry to find out what the answer was going to be if he asked, _How far does this go? Are we still friends?_

They were, and his Tony's Bullshit Detector was still in working order. Deniability be damned; he spent a long while going over the fragmentary video the two pilots had gotten of the encounter over Gulmira. Jim was used to knowing things that no one else knew; it was his job. He'd seen the specs on the repulsors for the Jericho six months before anyone saw one fired. This was different. This wasn't something bigger, faster, better; this was something _new_. As it turned out, Tony would very much fight if he had to, without hesitation. So would Pepper. Jim loved them both a little more for it.

The media madness after Iron Man went public had an unexpected up side: no one thought twice when Rhodey took over security at Stane's funeral and gave a blunt order: _No one gets within twenty feet of Tony or Pepper without being cleared through me._ Tony spent a long while at the graveside. That was a conversation no one had any business listening in on, and Jim ensured that no one did.

A couple of weeks after that, he stopped by the office and found Pepper with her head in her hands, tear tracks on her face, and three ringing telephones in front of her. He practically dragged her out to dinner.

“This is insane,” she said. “I can't do this. This job was impossible before. It's... what am I even supposed to do? He's going to get killed. I'd do it myself except he's never _here_. I never know where he is or what he's doing until afterward. I can't sleep. Even if I could, I don't have time _._ ”

“You need to get some help.”

“How?” She took a too-quick drink and coughed, then sighed. “It's not like I can... I don't know, _scold_ him. He's the one getting shot at..”

“So quit.” He shrugged. Her expression was so astonished that he barely maintained his own straight face.

Pepper grimaced. “Am I whining?”

“No. You just need to push back a little. Tony'll live.”

“We can hope. What do you think about all of this? You've known him forever.”

He took a sip of his beer and said, “I think this is better.” He was used to a particular braid of emotions with Tony—affection, exasperation, admiration, and irritation—the strands all frayed into another and worn smooth by the years. Pride went into the mix now, and something he hesitated to call by any name, a selfish sort of vindication. He had been _right_.

That made everything that happened after Monaco so much worse.

*

After a short, claustrophobic passage, the cavern floor began to slant down. It kept on dropping away as the walls opened up. Jim swept the cavern with wary eyes. Wires had been strung along the ceiling, and dim LEDs revealed four other entrances, one of them sealed off by a door.

“I think we want that one.” Tony looked to the farthest right opening, the sealed one. “I can hear a generator down the one next to it.”

“So?” Jim's hearing was still a little off from the gunshot.

“So, they've run a lot of cable up and down those two tunnels. They're powering something down that one, which they don't want easy access to, or they'd put it all in one place.”

That sounded reasonable. “Hopefully communications, then.” He moved that way. “I doubt we have a lot of time before they get their act together here.”

“We are _not_ calling SHIELD for help.”

“You got a better idea?” This was not the time to ask what the hell Tony's problem with that organization was. He studied the locked door.

“Do what we came here to do.”

*

The Monaco business was bad, and Jim didn't know what to make of it. He had his hands full anyway, trying to keep his superiors from sending tanks rolling through Malibu. Maybe that would have been the better option.

Jim Rhodes did not back down from a fight, not even this one. Especially not this one. White-hot anger was quenched by the cold necessity of lives at risk. That he would rather have been shot didn't signify; he took the suit.

They asked, of course, where he had spent the hours in between leaving the house and arriving at Edwards. _That thing has one hell of a learning curve, sir_ wasn't a lie if you looked at it the right way. Duty would take the place of mourning now. He spent the next few days watching Hammer's people work and trying his damnedest not to think at all. Maybe wearing the armor even once had flattened everything into subroutines, reduced him to machinery. If he thought about it, the sense of betrayal would come up and drown him. Had he spent all those months fighting, had he argued with his superiors, skated right on the edge of disobeying orders, for _this?_

Then he found out why, and anger wasn't even the right word any more _._ He found out most of it from Pepper, who found out most of it from SHIELD.

After the ceremony and the statements and the photographs were all done with, Jim said, “Let's get out of here for a minute.”

Tony gave it some actual thought before he agreed. They found a little hole in the wall, dead quiet on a DC afternoon except for a couple of down and out lobbyists, and for a while the place was very quiet while Jim tried to decide what to do. With hindsight, he could see a nightmarish kind of logic in it. _You were gonna go off somewhere and die and I wasn't supposed to know. Wasn't supposed to care?_ No months combing the desert this time. _I don't want to go to your funeral._

Straight-up punching Tony was not off the table; they could pick up right where they'd left off.

Or he could say, _And here I thought you never learned anything from Obie,_ because that had been some master-class manipulative fuckery. Tony might even agree with him.

Or Jim could take it as the world's most fucked-up compliment, that for all it seemed like he never paid attention, Tony _knew_ him. Knew him well enough to know exactly which buttons to push.

“We would have figured something out.” He hadn't entirely meant to say that out loud. He would have figured out something to tell the brass, something they would have believed. Would have wanted to be there, dammit.

“Yeah.” Tony's half-smile was as close as he ever came to apologizing for any of the shit he pulled. He got it.

“You are the dumbest smart person I have ever met.” Jim shook his head and picked up his beer bottle. “Let's not do this again.”

“Good plan.”

*

Jim kept his gaze fixed on the door, in case some of the Yellow Suits were prone to suicidal dedication. Behind him he heard an occasional metallic noise, but nothing else, not even a curse.

Finally Tony said, “Just about done. Once I say go, we've got six minutes.”

“Six minutes. Got it.” He glanced back. “Remind me, why do I ever listen to you?”

Tony looked up from his work with the wires. Bloody, hurt, barely holding himself together maybe, with that light that never faded hanging in between them, his grin might be shaky but his hands were steady. “I don't know. But you do.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks are due to IndigoStarblaster and hellseries for patient beta-reading, and to everyone else for just plain patience.


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